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A Tahoe ski resort bought two properties to house local workers to help the area’s dire hiring crisis, resort officials said.
Half of Lake Tahoe’s employees work outside the area, and two-thirds of those who live in the region don’t have enough income to afford their living expenses, according to data from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. At the same time, 65% of the area’s single-family homes sit mostly empty, waiting to be rented by tourists — or occupied occasionally by their out-of-town owners.
In an effort to house its employees, Palisades Tahoe, the largest ski resort in Lake Tahoe, purchased the Tahoe Vistana Inn, located in north Lake Tahoe, and a property in Kings Beach, California, the company said in a news release.
Tahoe Vistana Inn has 30 units and will be able to house about 50 employees, the company wrote in the release. The property will house full-time, seasonal or year-round, domestic or international employees, the company said. It includes hotel-style and apartment-style rooms.
The Kings Beach property is a “longer-term solution to housing,” the company said. It will have eight units and be able to house about 15 employees. Some of the units will also have fenced yards, allowing residents to have pets. The company said the Kings Beach property will help employees looking for a “stable living situation.”
Many seasonal Tahoe workers face housing challenges because they are unable to sign full-year lease agreements, Palisades officials said. Most of the resort workforce does not stay in the area for the entire ski season, so having the option to stay in a property owned by Palisades Tahoe can make it easier for a temporary worker to accept a seasonal position.
The resort owns and rents 13 other apartments in Olympic Valley and offers short-term leases for just the winter months. The resort rents the properties at the market rate and subsidizes them to employees “as needed,” the company said.
Palisades also has a winter lease with the U.S. Forest Service, which includes 23 campsites for employees to park their vehicles and live in.
The campground, located near Highway 89, is operated by the resort and only offers one amenity, waterless toilets with holding tanks underneath, the San Francisco Chronicle reported this past winter. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
“We know that workforce housing is an important issue facing our community and our business and we are investing in a variety of solutions,” said Dee Byrne, chief operating officer at Palisades Tahoe, in the release.
Other businesses and government organizations have launched projects recently in an attempt to address the housing crisis in the popular vacation spot. The Sugar Pine Village project, a government-funded initiative, aims to develop 248 units of affordable housing in South Lake Tahoe, just off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, according to the California Department of General Services.
Some local businesses have also considered dormlike housing after one business owner used an RV lot to build tiny cabins for its employees, the Chronicle reported.
Palisades Tahoe said its new properties aim to help address the region’s “workforce housing needs.” Short-term housing for seasonal employees is not Tahoe’s only housing crisis, however. The area’s home prices have nearly tripled over the past nine years.
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